Go up high in the mountains, where the air is so crisp and thin that it's like a razor and sears lungs and tears at throats, and it's cold every day of the year, and the night freezes so chill that unprotected skin flakes off like sheets of frost. It's worse in the winter, even though the winters have gotten warmer every year. It's natural to seek another's warmth, sensible even, and many a romance has blossomed in Colorado Springs.

Diana and Alana are roommates, and Sue and Swin are roommates, but Alana's not stupid and Swin was never blind, and neither of them really cares that Sue nestles in Diana's arms every night when Diana slips into Sue's bed, trailing the blanket off her bed like a terrified six-year-old. The sheets invariably coccoon them together, bound tight and close and thickly, so only fragments are visible: broad, tapered fingers slack against the sharp delineation of brown quilt and white sheet; pale toes dangling off the edge of the bed, glimmering like rubies because Swin's blandishments were too much; rosebud lips slightly parted so that Diana might have something to tease her about in the morning.

Every night it's been like that. But it's not like that tonight. Ruth got cut today, so tonight Sue has to hold Swin to her and let her cry, let her sing, let her curse out the selection committee and the fates. Diana has no choice but to retire to her own room and warm herself with memories.

She inserts her key in the door and inches it open, because she doesn't want to run the risk of waking Alana. Not that the sound would have, but Diana has this thing where she's thoughtful in stupid little things but selfish when it comes to the big things.

It's not that cold! is her first inane thought when she sees Alana's hand between Lindsay's legs, Lindsay's mouth sucking on Alana's shoulder, moonlight washing the scene into a dreamlike fog. They shift, they roll, they separate, they reunite. Alana draws lines of fire down Lindsay's body, fingertips and tongue tracing around and between Lindsay's breasts (such as they are, Diana thinks cattily), down her stomach, along her thighs. Lindsay has always been taut and tense, live wires strung together with frustration and insecurity, but here she has settled; the question that lives in her eyes, in the tilt of her head and the lift of her brows, has been answered. Somehow Diana is certain that Ben has never seen her like this.

Just as Willis has never seen Alana like this, as she slides her hands along Lindsay's back, brushes the nape of Lindsay's neck to make her breath catch, runs a thumb along the underside of Lindsay's jaw so that she throws her head back and parts her lips, the better for Alana to take her mouth in a lingering kiss. There is a controlling aspect to her that she conceals with care, but unveils here.

Diana feels the heat of her own arousal like her brain's on fire, and if someone doesn't notice her to quench her need, she's going to find herself jamming a hand down her pants or up into her bra, she's going to sit on the other bed and pleasure herself with the scene, because she's that horny and they're that good. But Lindsay does see her, and the dismay that pales her face into a death-mask is so over the top that Diana can't help but laugh.

"Didn't expect you back," Alana says calmly, and Diana's sure it's just coincidence that Alana has the sheet wrapped around her and covering so much that she could be in a PG-rated movie, because there's nothing self-conscious in the way Alana is watching her.

"Didn't mean to interrupt," Diana replies through a grin.

Lindsay blushes a little. "Are you freaked?" she asks Diana, as if her whole life depends on what Diana has to say, and maybe it does. Maybe the wrong words from Diana cause Ben to leave her; maybe the wrong words from Diana make Alana cringe from her; maybe the wrong words from Diana bring a half-truth to light and drum her out of Colorado Springs, out of Uncasville, away from everything she knew she needed the second her fingertips first brushed against leather.

But Diana doesn't take anything seriously enough that she'd do that. Diana just smirks and says, "Naw, but I'd like to be." With a wave of her hand, she adds, "As you were."

Alana and Lindsay exchange a skeptical and fondly frustrated look, because, really, there's no way to resume steamy intimate sex if someone's watching, even if Diana's on the other bed by now with her bare back turned to them, and it's just like Diana not to think of something like that. But Lindsay is fearless, or at least that's the impression she wants everyone (especially Alana) to have of her, so she takes Alana's chin in one hand and slides the other along Alana's butt, and kisses her and caresses her, and somehow they manage to forget about Diana for a while.

But Diana hasn't forgotten about them, not by a long shot, and God knows she hasn't stopped being turned on, because Lindsay is pretty and Alana is cute, and it's not every day Diana gets a free peep show. And she's always liked Alana, and she's gotten fond of Lindsay in the years since they were rookies stealing each other's thunder. Maybe neither of them would notice if she slips under the sheet and puts her arms around Alana's waist, splaying her fingers across Alana's abs; if she starts nibbling on Alana's earlobe and tickling her ear with tiny quick breaths; if she twines her leg around Alana's so as to draw her closer, to claim her from Lindsay in a rite that's older than hotels or polyester sheets or basketball.

As soon as she puts her plan into motion, though, as soon as she presses against Alana, Lindsay falls off the bed, so that's a definite no on the not noticing. "Diana! Goddamn it, ask next time before you come barging in!"

"I'm sorry, I didn't want you to end up on the floor. I thought I could fit okay!"

"You did. I didn't." Lindsay draws herself up and glares daggers at Diana. Diana grins back, cute and unashamed as a puppy. Alana's a little embarrassed, because she likes to think she could have told the difference between someone as raw as Lindsay and as experienced as Diana, but she was too caught up in the sensation to notice who was causing it, only that she liked that it was being caused and would like for it to continue being caused. And as she thinks about it with the lightning speed a playmaker needs, she wonders whether she had wanted it to be Diana all along, which would explain why she hasn't gotten completely freaked out by the fact that a woman with a girlfriend just climbed into bed with her.

"Not that it isn't a neat idea," she drawls, and watches their faces light up- Diana's so clearly that a blind woman could tell how excited she is, Lindsay's with a kind of desperate hope that nearly breaks Alana's heart. "Y'all just need to think on it a bit more." She casts a look at Diana's bed, and the tiny nightstand that separates it from hers (and Lindsay's, and temporarily Diana's), and after a moment of contemplation Lindsay and Diana catch on. Alana hides her smile and keeps her laughter inside; for a pair of point guards who are supposed to be able to think on their feet, they're not doing a very good job of seeing all situations and finding the one that leads to the score.

Vanessa and LaToya, who are actually just roommates and not interested in each other or anyone else who wants to keep warm in Colorado Springs, are going to give them hell in the next scrimmage for moving furniture at twelve-eighteen in the morning, because it's thirty-one flavors of tacky to wake competitors for slots up in the middle of the night, and if either of them wants to be total bitches about it, they can take it to the ethics people and have them sort things out. It's not like they would be, and Alana's pretty sure they won't, but if they do, well, DeLisha and Murriel both have connections to the Gators and Temeka has pictures that LaToya and LaTanya might want back at some point. Alana's a nice girl, unless you get her riled up, and then she descends like the wrath of God.

Once the beds are together, they have enough space to work with, and yet they don't immediately jump into a big pile of sex on the bed. Giving them time to think gives them time to doubt, time to cool off, time to wonder if this is really a good idea after all. Willis and Ben are obviously non-factors here, but Sue is very much a factor, a factor just down the hall, a factor that Diana loves quite a lot and that Lindsay's become friends with. "She said I could," Diana says aloud, and it sounds like she's trying to persuade herself more than anyone else.

"She said you could do us? Damn, that's forward-thinking of her," Lindsay says.

Alana rolls her eyes. Diana doesn't take it quite as well. Before Lindsay can blink, Diana has a hand buried in her hair, pulling her up angrily; in the morning, Diana will find little rings around the bases of her fingers. "She trusts me. She loves me. She knows I'll come back to her in the end. Don't ever make fun of that. Ever. Some things you don't joke about, you know?"

Of course, a statement like that coming from Diana is cause enough for Lindsay to laugh, and that's really not a good idea when Diana is furious and Diana is holding her up and quite ready to cause her some inexplicable mayhem. Showing up to practice with bruises, cuts, or broken bones might cause a stir, so Lindsay does the only thing she can think of to save her ass and calm Diana down: she swings and sways and plants an open-mouthed kiss on Diana's lips.

Diana drops her on the bed as abruptly as a slot machine pays off, and for one heart-stopping second she thinks that it didn't work and now instead of just smacking her around, Diana's going to kill her; how she'd explain the blood on the sheets, Lindsay hasn't a clue, because even if she kept it contained, no one would believe there was something normal about an athlete bleeding on the sheets. It would freak Alana out too, and Lindsay has gotten the sense that Diana would prefer to avoid doing that, for whatever reasons she might have.

What those reasons are, Lindsay doesn't have the chance to puzzle out, because that's the stop on her train of thought where Diana gets on the bed, straddles her, and pokes her in a few tender spots as if testing to see how done she is. It's hard to think about weighty matters when Diana is kneading her flesh, and if her nipples get any harder they may end up falling off, and that would be awkward for all concerned.

Alana hovers over the scene like a ghost, waiting, waiting, waiting, until Diana comes to her senses and moves over enough to allow her access to Lindsay. Alana has already done the search that Diana had to do, so she knows where to insert her finger, how to fit her curves against Lindsay's so that every centimeter of skin is involved in the whole thing. And just in case Diana's starting to wonder if Alana forgot about her, because Diana can be that self-involved even when she's driving another woman crazy in the sack, she brings her other arm around so that she can brush her fingers against the velvet-soft skin of Diana's throat.

Distracted as Lindsay is, she has the presence of mind to give as well as receive, much to Diana's surprise, because it usually takes a lot of experience to be so kind. She's a screamer, and that's another thing that takes Diana aback, because if there is anything that is synonymous with Lindsay Whalen, it's iron control, cold hard discipline, nothing shown, nothing revealed; her giving up that control is like Swin giving up shopping, Sue giving up French fries, Diana giving up confidence.

With a couple of strategic pushes and pulls, Diana finds herself in the center of the trio, face to face and mouth to mouth with Alana, Lindsay's fingers tapping out a measured triple beat on the inside of her thigh. Both of them have hands in her hair, curling stray chestnut strands around their fingers, but where Alana can amuse herself for a few minutes with each long hank, Lindsay has a harder time hanging on to the far shorter hair and soon tires of the game. Not that Diana has any objections to what she decides to do next. They trap her far more efficiently than any backcourt pressure sent by an opposing coach, but it's not like she wants to cross the line against them anyway.

And of course Alana has to have her chance, and as they shuffle like a shell game, Lindsay catches Diana's eye, looking too serious for this by a long shot, and the message is clearer than crystal, clearer than the crisp ringing of bells: Alana is the reason they're both here, and they'd better make her feel that. Diana's not sure of that assessment, nor will she let on that she's occasionally wondered what it would be like to make love to Alana, or to Lindsay, for that matter (never both at the same time, though; somehow that one never made its way onto the miles-long list of possibilities that Diana keeps in her head). She wouldn't mind making it special for Alana, though, doesn't mind letting Lindsay think she's gotten her own way through strength of will and force of character.

They descend on her together, and Diana changes the rules by changing her vertical orientation, licking at Alana's lips, leaving miniscule toothmarks on the inside of Alana's thighs, wounds that will heal before morning comes but will never leave Alana's memory. Lindsay's hands are busy with points north, places she'd never know about if she hadn't seen Alana without a baggy, shapeless jersey on. If it weren't for the sex, Lindsay might ponder the paradox of marketing the league with sex and then hiding the sexy parts. But there is the sex, and helping a superstar bring a star to climax is enough to keep any woman from thinking too deeply about paradoxes.

Alana clings, and it's Diana who she seizes, Diana who will have pencil-thin scratches from the microscopic flaws in Alana's neatly trimmed nails showing up in pale white the next morning, and Lindsay would be jealous if those same lines weren't already coming to light on her shoulders. Alana may have marked Diana as hers, but Lindsay has marked Alana with love-bites and tactile memories that will keep Alana awake nights when she doesn't need warmth but yearns for it anyway.

Which of course would lead to the question of how Diana has marked Lindsay, but Lindsay knows she's above that, or beyond that, or some preposition to that. Whatever happens between Alana and Diana after Colorado Springs, or Diana and Sue, or either of them and anyone else, is none of Lindsay's concern. After all, this came about for warmth and nothing else; as soon as she's down from the mountains, back where she belongs, she'll never do this again. She doesn't ask herself why a Minnesotan who laughs at snow and scorns the frost seeks refuge in a Southerner's arms and takes comfort in a Californian's touch, because if she asked herself that, she might discover an answer she doesn't want to think about, has tried not to think about for many years.

It's two in the morning by now, and by the time Diana extricates her head from between Alana's legs, Lindsay is settled against Alana's shoulder, eyes closed, breathing slow and deep, oblivious to the kiss Alana lays on her forehead and Diana's hand on her breast. "Looks like we wore the kid out," Alana says with a soft laugh.

"She'll learn," Diana says dismissively.

Alana thinks about shaking her head, remembers that she's lying in bed with someone using her shoulder as a pillow. "Only if she wants to, and the way she talks, I don't think she wants to."

"Oh, one of those who thinks denial's fun for the whole family?" Diana rolls her eyes. She's about to say a few other things, about as flattering, but when she opens her mouth nothing comes out but a yawn. She grins sheepishly. Alana smiles back and draws Diana closer to her, adjusting the blankets as she does.

And of course Diana has the last word before sleep claims either of them. "Heh, looks like I got your good side."